Othering in the book (spoilers!)

In Tender is the Flesh, set in a dystopian future, the world has turned to eating human beings in place of other animals. The people to be eaten, legally anyway (there is, of course, a black market) are bred specifically for the purpose, and often genetically modified to grow faster. They are products of artificial insemination, raised in incubators and cages, and have their vocal cords removed early to keep them quiet/docile. They are never to be called human, or people, they are “special meat” or “product” or “head (Bazterrica 8, 11, 15). A person could be jailed or sent to the Municipal Slaughterhouse themselves for using terms which admit the humanity of the special meat (Bazterrica 3). “No one can call them humans because that would mean giving them an identity” (Bazterrica 8). 

 

The book doesn’t shy away from uncomfortable details. A few short chapters even include graphic details of the slaughter process taking place at protagonist Marcos’ place of employment. But what is most haunting about this book is that throughout the majority, Marcos seems as uncomfortable with the world in which he finds himself as the reader is. He chooses not to eat meat, claiming his doctor asked him to stop temporarily, he seems uncomfortable with the men at the game preserve that enjoy hunting humans for sport, he even finds some feral puppies and plays with them, lamenting the loss of his own pets (all animals were supposed to be killed to avoid the virus being transferred to humans) while he plays with them (Bazterrica 110-115). 

 

When Marcos is given a female he is meant to slaughter and eat, he doesn’t do either. Instead he keeps her in his barn a few days, then brings her into his house. While there is definite moral trouble with the fact he has sex with and impregnates her, the reader is allowed to believe that there is an emotional attachment forming on his part toward her that might almost make that alright. Marcos’ wife has left him to stay with her mother in the wake of the death of their son, whose arrival in their lives was a long struggle in itself. So, the reader is encouraged to think Marcos is filling the void of his lost child and estranged wife with a relationship with this female meant to be meat that he has named Jasmine. He has taught Jasmine how to do almost everything, he sings to her, they watch TV together – there is as much communication as there can be between himself and a woman without vocal cords raised to be killed and eaten. 

 

But in a haunting finale, when Jasmine goes into labor he calls his wife, Cecilia, (who knew nothing about the situation) to help, and once the baby is delivered and Jasmine is reaching out her arms for her child – Marcos clubs her in the head. Over Cecilia’s objection that “She could have given us more children.” Marcos drags Jasmine’s body to the barn to slaughter her and says, in a a voice “so pure it wounds: “She had the human look of a domesticated animal”” as his only form of explanation (Bazterrica 209). 

 

So that even the man who seemed the reader’s voice of reason and connection to sanity in a world justifying cannibalism, ultimately saw Jasmine as the othered and essentialized ‘animal’ she was bred to be. He had individualized her for a while, but once he had what he wanted, his emotional focus returned to what was his – his wife, his child – and Jasmine returned to being a mere product.